Spring has returned: time for flowers in bloom, going outside without a coat, opening the windows of your apartment—and, now, viral videos of high schoolers’ “promposals.”
The “promposal” is a trend that’s emerged in the past few years: high schoolers asking someone to prom in elaborate ways, often in front of crowds of fellow students, often recorded. A quick Google search gave me more than enough examples. A movie marquee in the middle of town. The scoreboard at a hockey game. Flash mobs at school. Signs along the side of the road. Five hundred Ping-Pong balls in a girl’s locker. A video with a personalized message from a well-known band, shown in the girl’s class. A banner on a firetruck. A horse. Multiple examples involving cops pretending to pull the teens over and give them a ticket. It’s no coincidence that this trend has developed alongside the growth of social media, since promposals are often as much about going viral as going to prom.
And it’s a trend I wish would stop. Prom is fraught with enough pressure, particularly for girls, as is.
(Disclaimer: in this article I’ll generally be talking about a boy asking a girl. Of course, plenty of promposals are girls asking boys or someone asking a person of the same gender. But boys asking girls is still the most common, and it’s the situation I find most troubling, so it’s what I’ll focus on.)
Prom is a strange event to begin with. A massive industry has been set up around this single dance, and that industry has in turn built up the idea of prom. Every year, Seventeen publishes a special prom issue filled with dresses that cost hundreds of dollars and will only be worn once. Teens are told they should have the perfect outfit, the perfect pre-prom dinner, the perfect pictures, the perfect arrival (often in a limo)—and the perfect date.
It can be hard being single in high school, where dating life exists in a fishbowl. Prom magnifies this. A girl whom no one asks to prom is made to feel like she’s missed out on one of the most important milestones in her life. This was already tough when asking someone to prom was done in a simple, private conversation. Now girls have to watch their peers being asked through elaborate, public gestures of romance, all the while standing on the sidelines.
And even if a girl is “lucky” enough to get a great promposal, it’s not always the beautiful romantic thing the viral videos make it out to be. What if a girl being given an elaborate promposal hates being the center of attention? What if she doesn’t actually like the guy asking her? When a guy has gone to great lengths to pull an elaborate stunt, and the whole school is watching as he awaits her reply, does a girl really have a choice but to say yes?
All of these critiques could also be said about marriage proposals, unsurprisingly. The name itself draws parallels between being asked to prom and being asked to marry. Except the difference is, after you graduate high school, it’s likely you’ll never see your prom date again. Prom is one night, not a lifetime commitment. It is, ultimately, just a dance.
If two people are in a committed relationship, and they know the other person would love an over-the-top promposal, then fine. I’m not saying it’s always bad. What’s bad is that it’s become expected. In addition to the litany of pressures that come with being in high school, teens can now add another: getting asked to prom in the perfect way. And, preferably, getting thousands of shares, too.
